Mahua Moitra, the self-proclaimed ambassador of intersectional wokes, has a sordid history of Hinduphobia (fear of Hindus) and Hindumisia (hatred of Hindus). She has been a history-sheeter — not less than a polemicist, so to speak.
This time she was whisked into the Kaali poster row when she allegedly — inadvertently or otherwise — chose to support Leena Manimekalai after she sparked a vociferous furore by sharing the contentious movie poster depicting a woman dressed as Goddess Kaali smoking a cigarette and holding an LGBTQ+ flag.
This time, she explained that she had every right as an individual to imagine Goddess Kaali as a meat-eating and alcohol-accepting deity because everyone has their own way of praying. Hitherto, Moitra had a clear mandate to disrespect the central government and denigrate Hindus any way she could.
It’s almost a sombre comedy that the words “plural” and “secular” are being used to refer to India’s past because the silent majority bears witness to these weapons of crime that the state has conveniently and systematically used against Hindus, but that’s a different discussion.
Rabindranath Tagore once observed that “Christianity and Islam have a distinct enmity against all other religions. They are not content with simply practising their own religions; they are determined to destroy all other religions. The only way to reach an agreement with them is to accept their religion.”
If this remark, according to Moitra’s “woke” school of thought, makes Tagore a purported bigot and communal, then she must have the impudence to decry and debase him as well! This is our country’s tragedy.
Perhaps India’s decency was well-maintained in the past when Mahua Moitra, in sheer exasperation, showed the middle finger to Arnab Goswami, the anchor of a TV debate on national television, or when she assaulted a lady constable, or when she referred to India as the “Susu Potty Republic.”
According to her inquisitiveness, it won’t be difficult for her to answer which of her aforementioned acts accurately portrays India’s decency in the past. “What kind of India do we want? What kind of India are we willing to stand up for, fight for, be abused for, and be imprisoned for? ”
Moitra bashing the BJP is absolutely fine democratically, but in doing so, she always crosses the line and ends up berating and libelling Hindus. She is forced to demonstrate her secular credentials, which amount to anti-Hindu slurs and innuendos, effectively mocking everything Hindus hold dear.
Hailing from a party that has a proclivity for appeasement and that too ratified by the High Court, it seems a bit rich coming from her sermons about Hinduism. As part of the appeasement stratagem, Durga Puja immersion processions were prohibited after 4 pm to accommodate Muharram processions, ignoring Bengalis’ attachment to the festivities.
In a scathing indictment, the Calcutta High Court in 2017 called the government’s order prohibiting immersion procession an act to “appease the minority section of the public”. Never before have vote banks been nurtured with such zeal that funds for minority institutions have been allocated in excess of funds for higher education, or the time allotted for the immersion of the Durga Mata idol to make way for the Muharram procession, or the appointment of a Muslim on the Tarakeswar temple board to monthly stipends for thousands of imams and muezzins.
This list goes on and on. In fact, the party that Moitra represents has openly acknowledged Muslims as a vote bank, comparing them to milch cows. Moitra, on the other hand, is bold enough to say that others favour certain groups.
Not long ago, her party’s leader, Mamata Banerjee, took issue with the chanting of “Jai Shri Ram”. Banerjee, who was on stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Netaji’s birth anniversary celebrations at Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial, lamented being “disrespected” because she couldn’t stand the slogans “Jai Shri Ram” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai”.
Mamata Banerjee conveniently chanted the Islamic verse “La ilaha illallah Muhammadarrasullah” at an event in 2018, but “Jai Shri Ram” is insulting to her. While “Jai Shree Ram” means “Lord Ram’s Victory”, “La ilaha illaallah” means “There is no god but Allah”.
The chant completely denies the existence of other faiths and gods, reflecting the inherent and exclusivist nature of Abrahamic cults such as Islam and Christianity. Prabhu Ram connects Bharat across the span of time. We are all his heirs, and it is clear that nothing in the chant is communal.
If Moitra’s constant Gaumutra slurs and dehumanisation of the majority for everything wasn’t enough to demonstrate her innate contempt for Hindus, she also referred to Brahmins as “Chotiwala Rakshasa”, which translates to “braided monsters”.
Moitra’s “genuine concern” for the media is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Her first speech in Parliament, in which she quoted from a poster once sold in the gift shop of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and listed 12 “early warning signs of fascism”, earned her the low-hanging fruit, the woke star tag.
Along with this, her fashionable habit of frequently peppering the language with words like “patriarchy” and “privilege” favoured her as an “intellectual”. However, it was later claimed that she stole her speech idea from a January 2017 article on washingtonmonthly.com by Martin Longman, replacing Trump with Modi and adding her own words to fit the Indian context. Nonetheless, as long as the illusion of her fiery stance against the government persists, she continues to generously pump out fake news and baseless allegations of concocted hypotheses.
It’s a shame that many swear words still have oppressive patriarchal roots, and that their use and celebration has only encouraged casual sexism and misogyny over time. Confuting the popular belief, she is not a supporter of the country’s feminist movement either for she was seemed celebrating women-centric abuse hurled at her political opponent in exchange for political gains.
Instead of harshly condemning the words, Moitra considered them “priceless.” In 2022, India sees through and rejects fake news and selective outrage even more vehemently than before. This India has awakened, and the phoney narratives of people like Mahua Moitra will be challenged at every turn.
Finally, I would advise the Left to be more selective in their role models because the devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world that he didn’t exist. More often than not, Moitra is projected as a suave, erudite leader who stands for democracy and takes on fascism, which is nothing but a strawman.
Yuvraj Pokharna is an independent journalist and columnist. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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